1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to wireless local loop telephone networks, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for providing a maintenance and diagnostic mode entry access to a wireless local loop telephone network.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is an example of a wireless communication system 100 widely used today. Calls can be made from, or received by, a conventional telephone 102. Calls originated from the telephone 102 are routed through the public switched telephone network 104 (PSTN) to an inter-working function 106 (IWF) which processes the call for transmission over the wireless communication system 100. The call is routed to a base station 108 for transmission via antenna 110 to, in a first instance, a cellular telephone depicted by mobile station 114, or in a second instance, to a local loop wireless (WLL) telephone network, depicted by a fixed wireless terminal 118 (FWT) which are located within the coverage area provided by the base station 108. The transmitted calls are received by the mobile station 114 via antenna 112, and by the fixed wireless terminal 118 via antenna 116 within the coverage area. Calls can also be originated from the mobile station 114 or the fixed wireless terminal 118 to the telephone 102, from the mobile station 114 to the fixed wireless terminal 118, and from the fixed wireless terminal 118 to the mobile station 114. The transmission of calls between the telephone 102 and the mobile station 114 is well known to one of ordinary skill in the art, for such systems as mobile radio telephone services, cellular telephone systems, and PCS telephone systems. The transmission of calls between the telephone 102 and the fixed wireless terminal 118 used in wireless local loop telephone networks is also well known to one of ordinary skill in the art.
As previously described above, the prior art wireless local loop telephone networks enabled a number of conventional telephones or other wired communication devices to communicate through the wireless communication system to either telephones connected to a public switched telephone network or cellular phones. When a wireless local loop telephone network was utilized as described above, the transmission protocols used in such systems placed limitations on the types of transmissions which can be handled. Such systems, as described above, regularly provided analog signaling for use with conventional telephones, and in addition provided an OAMP (Operation, Authentication, Maintenance and Provisioning) mode which enabled remote diagnostic monitoring of the fixed wireless terminal 118 and the wireless local loop telephone network. One example of such a prior art system is one utilizing the IS-95 communication protocol. In such prior art systems, all communication directed to the fixed wireless terminal 118 required a separate phone number to be assigned to all locally connected phones and separately to address the fixed wireless terminal 118 to enable the OAMandP mode of operation. No provision was made in such prior art systems for providing communication between devices utilizing digital data without changing the protocols between an end user data mode and an OAMandP mode.
Thus what is needed is a method and apparatus for providing both an OAMP mode of operation and support for digital data devices while maintaining the use of the conventional wireless communication protocols in use today.